Just wondering: why Isaac Asimov? As far as I'm aware, while he was not homophobic, he was quite a randy heterosexual. Is there new evidence to the contrary?
Excellent point. I feel like I got this one from a list off of Wikipedia over a year ago now--it may be that because he died of AIDs, someone inadvertently added is name and not knowing a thing about his personal life, I bit. My bad. Will correct ;-)
I see. The current theory is that when he had his heart bypass he got a blood transfusion. This would have been in the early 1980's, thus the probability that he was infected with HIV through the transfusion.
He was married twice, had two children from his first marriage. In his autobiography he several times says that he's very much in favour of gay rights but he's heterosexual.
There is quite a lot of discussion on teh Intarwebz about his sexism, his history of sexual assault and extramarital affairs and the like. At a Mensa convention in New York City in the 1980's at which he was a speaker I climbed a staircase behind him. He had two women walking with him, with a hand on the butt of each woman. There are nearly innumerable stories about his use of innuendo and touching to assault women he encountered. The only reason he got away with it is that he was a famous author and personality. When people at science fiction conventions complained, the people were ejected from the convention, as Asimov was too famous to reprimand or expel.
Just wondering: why Isaac Asimov? As far as I'm aware, while he was not homophobic, he was quite a randy heterosexual. Is there new evidence to the contrary?
ReplyDeleteExcellent point. I feel like I got this one from a list off of Wikipedia over a year ago now--it may be that because he died of AIDs, someone inadvertently added is name and not knowing a thing about his personal life, I bit. My bad. Will correct ;-)
ReplyDeleteI see. The current theory is that when he had his heart bypass he got a blood transfusion. This would have been in the early 1980's, thus the probability that he was infected with HIV through the transfusion.
ReplyDeleteHe was married twice, had two children from his first marriage. In his autobiography he several times says that he's very much in favour of gay rights but he's heterosexual.
There is quite a lot of discussion on teh Intarwebz about his sexism, his history of sexual assault and extramarital affairs and the like. At a Mensa convention in New York City in the 1980's at which he was a speaker I climbed a staircase behind him. He had two women walking with him, with a hand on the butt of each woman. There are nearly innumerable stories about his use of innuendo and touching to assault women he encountered. The only reason he got away with it is that he was a famous author and personality. When people at science fiction conventions complained, the people were ejected from the convention, as Asimov was too famous to reprimand or expel.